1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method which automatically expands and contracts panes displayed on a screen of a portable electronic device. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method which automatically expands and contracts panes displayed on a screen of a portable electronic device according to a user's interaction with the displayed panes.
2. Description of the Related Art
The use of portable electronic devices such as for example, mobile telephones, tablet computers, electronic book readers, consumer electronics, personal digital assistants and the like to search for and manage content either stored in the electronic devices or searched for from remote locations, such as the Internet, intranet, and the like has increased significantly in recent years. Many of these portable electronic devices include touch-sensitive surfaces as input devices. Therefore, to search for and manage the content displayed on a screen of the portable electronic device, a user needs to input a command on the portable electronic device. The command is usually input through a user touching the touch-sensitive surface. This is usually done by either touching the touch-sensitive surface of the portable electronic device with the user's finger or through an object such as for example a stylus or pen. In addition, a layout of the panes or windows displayed on the screen of the portable electronic device allows the user to search for and manage the displayed content which is either stored in the portable electronic device or searched for from external locations, such as for example the Internet.
Many applications for searching and managing displayed content on a portable electronic device layout an interface with a plurality of panes or windows. One example of such interfaces is a two “pane” interface, in which one pane provides content based on the interaction with the other pane. A particular example of such pane layout is a scrollable list of email subjects next to the currently selected email and a month-view calendar above a scrollable list of appointments for the selected day. With such interfaces, one pane usually dominates or occupies most of the area of the screen of the electronic device while the other pane occupies a smaller area of the screen of the electronic device and thus the smaller pane appears compressed and is not as pleasant to interact with as the larger pane.
Accordingly, methods have been provided to address these issues. For example, in larger electronic devices, such as desktop computers, particular methods are provided which allow the user of the desktop computer to manually drag edges or corners of the displayed pane in order to adjust the panes size. However, this process is cumbersome and cannot be easily adapted to portable electronic devices. Furthermore, desktop computers employ hidden panes that appear upon moving a cursor controlled by a pointing device such as a mouse. However, this process is also inapplicable to portable electronic devices, because portable electronic devices do not utilize a cursor to navigate the content displayed on the screen.
Instead, in portable electronic devices, a user's finger, a stylus and the like, are used to touch the screen and interact with the contents displayed thereon. Therefore, existing methods for managing the size of the panes displayed on the screen of portable electronic devices are cumbersome and inefficient.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present invention.